The Commons
Secret Belgian bound screenprints and risographs on paper and trace, wood with screenprinted cloth pocket
This book includes a series of expressive prints that play with the idea of vertical perspective and how we visually illustrate ownership. The sleeve is decorated with a print of the quintessentially English patchwork landscape, surviving from the Enclosure Movement during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Land formerly belonging in common for sustenance was privatised and the owners would build hedges to delineate their property, depleting the commoners’ rights and reducing them to selling their labour. The commons and privatisation are still relevant today.
Gallery
Source material
George Shaw-Lefevre, Baron Eversley, English Commons and Forests: the Story of the Battle During the Last Thirty Years for Public Rights Over the Commons and Forests of England and Wales, (London: Cassell, 1894)
DiscoverEd URL
Shelf mark
Special Collections: *N.15/3.93
Playfair location: *N.15/3.93
Portrait
Copyright & open licence
Copyright © Matilda Taylor, The University of Edinburgh 2020 CC BY-SA
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.